Rumours about President Hosni Mubarak's health have sparked a wave of accusations and counter-accusations, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Taking a taxi to Maadi last week the driver asked me whether President Hosni Mubarak was ill. I asked where he'd heard such rumours and immediately he answered from the press. Yet even before some independent newspapers began to pose questions about the president's health, rumours were rife on Cairo's streets. Unlike other occasions, when idle gossip was nipped in the bud, this time they were allowed to proliferate. Many wonder why this was the case. , editor of Al-Dostour, was questioned yesterday by state security prosecutors on the grounds that disseminating rumours about President Mubarak's health could constitute incitement to unrest. Earlier, on 3 August, the Higher Press Council, headed by the NDP secretary-general and chairman of the Shura Council, Safwat El-Sherif, held an emergency session to review the media treatment of rumours concerning the president's health. Mrs Suzanne Mubarak told the Dubai- based Al-Arabia channel on 2 September that she had been shocked by the extent of the gossip. "Some people called me on the telephone to ask about the president's health and my answer was that everything is OK," she said. "But as a citizen, and not the wife of the president, I feel that those who spread such rumours, whether they are newspaper journalists or television programmers, should be held to account." The rumours, she continued, have a negative impact on the country and undermine its higher interests. In an interview with Osama Saraya, the editor of Al-Ahram on 31 August, President Mubarak called on the public to ignore any rumours. "Outlawed groups stand behind these rumours because they do not want a stable society and aim only to detract from the achievements of Egypt and its people," Mubarak said. "Rumours always come to the fore in August," Mubarak continued, and he urged the public to ignore them. Egypt, he said, had developed into an open political society and such rumour mongering was a hangover from the past. President Mubarak's interview with Saraya came two days after a much publicised visit to Borg Al-Arab, west of Alexandria. The visit was clearly intended to dispel rumours that the president's health had deteriorated to such an extent that he had been hospitalised. Yet despite the Borg Al-Arab visit and Al-Ahram interview, gossip continued by word of mouth and via the Internet. The president was seriously ill, suffering from circulation problems and had flown to France for medical treatment, they claimed. It was Al-Dostour that translated the rumours into print, with Eissa claiming the president's health problems can make him "distracted and unable to remember events and names easily". Such claims -- which a single televised presidential address would have done much to dispel -- precipitated into a clash between NDP officials and editors of the state-owned press on the one hand, and Muslim Brothers and the independent press on the other. El-Sherif insisted that President Mubarak was well and that he had received three detailed reports about the NDP's internal elections. "President Mubarak is following the elections closely and is happy with their conduct so far," said El-Sherif. In response to Al-Dostour 's claims that the state-run press began a hostile campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and independent newspapers. Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, editor of the daily Al-Gomhuriya, claimed the malicious rumours about President Mubarak spread because the Muslim Brothers were able to exploit independent newspapers and other media outlets in order to foment unrest. "The Brothers make use of democracy and freedom to terrorise society," he said. Ibrahim then pointed the finger at the US Ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone, claiming that "at the beginning of August, Ricciardone told American journalists that in his last meeting with Mubarak he felt the president was not in good health". "He was seeking to use this statement to pressure Egypt to toe the American line on Iraq," argues Ibrahim, who went on to claim that during meetings in Sharm El-Sheikh last month, US secretaries of state and defense Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates had failed to drive a wedge between Egypt and Arab Gulf countries over Iraq. Ibrahim claimed Ricciardone had repeated his statements about Mubarak's health to various EU ambassadors, and that the US Embassy in Egypt had coordinated with the Muslim Brotherhood to spread the rumours. "It is no secret that the Brothers receive legal assistance from the Americans while they are being tried before military courts," said Ibrahim, citing this as proof of his other contentions. The US Embassy in Cairo has expressed its dismay over the publication of such false information. The American ambassador to Egypt has never, it said in a public statement, expressed any worries about President Mubarak's health. Rose El-Youssef -- believed to be close to the President's son Gamal -- launched a scathing attack on the independent press. Al-Dostour, thundered Rose El-Youssef 's Chairman Karam Gabr, together with the rest of the independent and opposition press that "deliberately exaggerated tensions between Muslim and Christians and now they have falsified reports about the president's health to spread chaos and instability at the behest of the Muslim Brothers." Rose El-Youssef 's editor, Abdallah Kamal, insisted it was time the authorities took action to stop such behaviour because, he said, there was a difference between freedom and chaos. Hamdi Hassan, spokesman for the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, said state-run press accusations against the group were an attempt to pour oil on fire. "The Brothers are not responsible for the sudden disappearance of President Mubarak nor for the rumours which followed," said Hassan. Observers believe the state-run press campaign against independent newspapers augurs ill for press freedom in Egypt. Amr Hashem Rabei, an analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies believes that President Mubarak should have appeared on television to address the nation about his health. "He did not do this and naturally rumours spread like wildfire."
